


Caring For Your Blacklight

by volpeanon



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: A little gore, Cross Lives Bitch, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Game, alex just.... needs some help and support, alex says How Do Emotions and Healthy Coping Mechanisms, and he's getting it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23610988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volpeanon/pseuds/volpeanon
Summary: The complete guide, by Capt. Robert Cross.
Relationships: Robert Cross/Alex Mercer
Comments: 12
Kudos: 90





	Caring For Your Blacklight

It was a good part petulance that Alex dove into roles of protector whenever they came his way. He wasn't made for this, so he'd do it just to prove a point as much as because he wanted to. From Dana, to Ragland, to the hospital, to the city; Dana laughingly said he sounded like Batman when he talked about protecting it. He did spend a lot of time crouching on the corners of rooftops.

"And just as brooding," she added too, ruffling his hair.

He didn't realise, but it turned out he was doing it to cope, as well. When he was busy worrying about the world around him he could drown out what was going on inside. He forgot, in his way, that a lidded pot eventually boils over. And oh boy, when it boiled over, it  _ boiled. _ Nothing warned him. He was used to the utter fucking chaos of battling a hive by now - he was even getting into the swing of keeping an eye on the Wisemen when he crossed their path in one of these fights, distracting the infected from them when they were pressed just a little too hard. Just for a moment he found himself casting about in the middle of the street, wondering where the little band he'd been defending had gone, when the hunters all seemed to coordinate and rush him at once. One bowled into him, knocking him down; another, in its excitement, pinned the first on top of him, and then another joined the pile, and Alex didn't have the leverage or the biomass to heave them off- they were crushing him into the asphalt and squealing and grinding their thick teeth in his ears, gnashing to get at his face- he couldn't  _ move- _

Time had passed, but he didn't know how much or even really what that meant - only that as his brain turned itself back on, process by process, there was something blessedly muffled about everything around him. With his eyes closed and no weight pressing him down, he was practically floating.

Another switch flipped in his brain and told him, now he was more able to deal with it, that there was pressure on his ears. Not badly, just very firm. He thought it must be his own hands until he moved them and found them by his sides. He reached up and found-

His eyes opened. The Specialist crouched over him, palms pressed over Alex's ears, and the whole Wiseman team, although at a slight distance, stood with every last weapon trained on him.

Alex blinked. He sat up, and Cross slowly took his hands away, making Alex flinch at the sudden volume increase around him. A flicker of tension was mirrored back at him. But when he didn't immediately start trying to eat Cross, a handful of guns were lowered.

"You okay?"

Alex stared incredulously at the man who, only a few months ago, had seemed just like the rest of the goosestepping masses. "Uh- yeah- I'm-" he looked away, struggling between confusion and something like embarrassment "I don't know what-"

"Happens to the best of us." was the startlingly blasé reply. Alex tried to imagine the man in front of him turning into a mess in the middle of the battlefield for no discernible reason. Either Blackwatch's best field agent was admitting to having panic attacks, or he was just saying it to make Alex feel better.

Neither really fit the image Alex had in mind of him.

"Can you stand?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Alex mumbled, wanting very much to be away from this whole situation. Cross had a good professional attitude that Alex had seen at its best and most unshakeable when he kept a straight face as Alex devoured Randall maybe five feet away from him - so maybe Alex was imagining the awkward feeling in the air. He struggled to his feet and tried not to meet the many watching eyes. "Uh- I should- uhm- th-thanks-"

He still fled before he could sound even more like an idiot.

Ignoring that whole incident was a lot easier than the absolute shitshow inside his head when he tried to think about it, so he went back to ignoring all the inside issues. Things needed to be simple right now; good guys, bad guys, in the middle not-remotely-trustworthy-but-convenient-for-now guys.

Whenever the thoughts got too complicated, whenever he got bogged down because his brain kept running over things that didn’t fit into that assessment, Alex got into the habit of opening the locked door in the back of his brain that kept the hivemind to a low rumble. Niggling, unwelcome ideas like ‘the Wisemen look out for each other like a family’ and ‘when Cross muttered about taking responsibility for his mistakes that one time, I actually believed him for a full minute’ got mowed down pretty effectively by the horde of infected all shrieking at once. After he’d fought that lot off and locked the door again, he wasn’t in much of a state to be thinking about anything. Which was another mistake, because he did it out of habit one day, opening that door before he’d even really thought about it. Everything became screaming, desperate; old infected rippling with agony and confusion; new ones still clinging to some semblance of their old humanity and the horror that it let them feel at what was happening to them. Through it all ran the ceaseless drone that made Alex’s biomass start to boil, the ache and urge to consume, to infect, to grow and grow until there was nothing but virus left-

His left arm was trying to tell him something. Vivid and first-hand, the sensation struck through the mess inside. The fever heat and violent shoving of the virus didn’t stand a chance against whatever this was, warm, firm, some vibration to it that dimmed the things that were just inside his head.

A hand on his upper arm, an even pulse, that delightful human body temperature. He sighed, and gently loosened and extracted his fingers from their convulsive grip on his hair.

Then he realised it was the Specialist that was standing beside him, touching him, and that he’d kind of sagged against the man a bit, seeking his warmth and his solid presence. In surprise, he jerked away. Cross stepped back, hands raised,  _ apologetic. _

“Sorry. You seemed-”

“I’m  _ fine.” _ it came out more aggressive than Alex intended. It was himself he was admonishing.

“Right. Sorry. No touching.”

That made a stupidly upset feeling well in Alex’s chest. He didn’t want this man to touch him, he didn’t trust this man. Well, he did. But he didn’t- _ shit. _ He needed to not think about this right now. He needed to run back to the hospital and hug Dana. He liked wrapping her up against his chest. He also, when he looked at Cross’s thick arms, wondered what it would be like to be wrapped up in them-

What the fuck was  _ wrong _ with him?

“Mercer.”

He blinked back to reality again. Fighting the hivemind always left him like this. “What?”

“What do you need?”

_ “What?” _

“When you’re like that. Do I leave you alone? Do I talk to you?”

Alex’s mouth opened and hung there, speechless. Seriously?  _ Seriously? _ There was no way they were having this conversation, there was no way this man was speaking to him with something gentle under that soldiers’ efficiency. “I-” he didn’t know, anyway, he didn’t think too hard about this whole mess precisely so he wouldn’t realise it was such a terrible coping mechanism “Uh- just- it’s fine, I just- get like that sometimes.”

“I noticed. Can I be honest?” Alex thought it would be rhetorical, but Cross actually waited for his hesitant nod “If you were one of my men, I wouldn’t let you play the tough guy and ‘it’s fine’ me for a second.”

Things were getting complicated again. Alex specifically did not  _ like _ complicated. “Fine, then, just, a hand on my arm or something.” he blurted, because he needed this to be over.

“You sure?”

_ No, not remotely.  _ “Yeah, whatever. Do you have time for a fucking heart to heart here or do you wanna actually talk about something important?”

He didn’t think he sounded convincing at all, and the look on Cross’s face before he covered it with that trained blankness said he didn’t, either.

Alex thought he didn’t really like being touched, with Dana as the sole, unintimidating exception. It turned out, he was very used to being touched by infected trying to rip his guts open. It turned out, normal people touching you was very different from that.

Not that Robert Cross counted as  _ normal, _ but more normal than Alex was a start.

He felt like he was being pulled apart; he went to the crushing hivemind to escape from thinking specifically about the Wisemen (specifically about Cross), and kept finding a hand on him pulling him out that just twisted everything up worse with how  _ nice  _ it felt. He realised, dismally, that he was going to have to step up and make some kind of genuine solution to the whole debacle rather than just continue to shove more and more of it under the rug until there was nothing left that  _ wasn’t  _ under it.

“What is it?” Cross asked, practically making Alex jump in a moment of quiet.

“Nothing.”

“Right.”  _ Bullshit, _ said the pointed silence. Alex fidgeted.

“The hivemind. It’s- it’s a lot right now.”

“Is that what gives you those episodes?”

“Yeah.”

“And is it worse or are you just not up to handling it right now?”

Alex looked for what was under the question; Cross wondering if he was going feral, maybe, or weak. “It just does it.”

“There has to be a reason.”

“Maybe it’s my time of the month,” he retorted scathingly, perpetually irritated by Cross’s inability to accept an excuse. Cross just refused to rise to the bait.

“Happens to the best of us. But if it’s not getting any better, doesn’t that mean we’re not doing as well as we thought? Where’s it coming from if there’s only half the infected around that there were before?”

“Fuck, I don’t know, it’s me I guess, me fucking up and getting tired of listening to them scream all the time, okay?”

The pause was a heavy one, at least for Alex, who dared not glance over at Cross to read his expression. “Is it like that all the time?”

“No. Just when I let it out.”

“I won’t say ‘just don’t then’, but I’m wondering.”

“Sometimes-” he paused, struggling with the words “It’s easier not to think about things. Sometimes fighting off a monster inside my head is better than other things.”

Sirens passed far below their rooftop, and Cross let out a heavy breath. “Yeah, I can see that.”

Alex should have made his excuses and fled, but he was remembering the Regan. He'd gone into that with the clearest head he'd had since he was made, all because of that spare hour before they got on the helicopter that took them in. He got to sort out his story, shake it into order, say the words out loud and feel the burden of them lift, if only for a little while. He'd forgotten who he was talking to, in all honesty. "Is it some weird virus thing that I'd rather get messed up by a hunter than just think about things?"

"No," Cross almost seemed to laugh "That's  _ very _ human."

Alex didn't want to admit how pleased he was with that answer.

"-and I didn't- fuck, I don't know, I just forgot, I guess. That sounds fucking stupid. I'd forgotten I didn't  _ have _ to kill people. And I took a chunk out of her before I realised."

"Is she in the hospital?" Cross asked, the file forgotten in his lap.

"She was. She must've left by now. I didn't want to… I didn't think she'd want to see me after it. So I don't know."

A thoughtful silence. Then Cross said quietly "I got sent the report on that by accident. Or, someone put me on the list to get it and Randall revoked it, but I got it anyway."

"Why would he do that?" Not that Alex couldn't find it out for himself, but it was easier to ask someone who already knew than go digging through the jumbled, distorted memories of an unpleasant old man.

"Turns out there was a lot I wasn't being told, but that was the first time I had proof. You should've seen the amount of bullshit they came up with to try and avoid the idea that you might've had a conscience."

Alex hovered, staring at his hands, feeling weird. He meant to say something scathing, but what came out was a soft "You didn't believe it?"

Cross looked at him and for a moment, just a heartbeat, Alex thought he saw a smile. It was too subtle to read in any detail; so why did he feel like he was going to stop breathing? "Not for a second."

He started talking about something else; anything else to try and stop thinking too hard, to fill the quiet, to hide his fidgeting hands. Only after he'd left did he realise that he'd been talking for an hour about breeding plants, that Cross, fucking The Specialist, had been sitting there  _ listening _ to him talk about  _ gardening, _ and that that smile hadn't ever really left Cross's eyes, and he'd kept  _ looking _ at Alex with it and there was something about it that made Alex feel weird in his sternum but he didn't know what that even meant-

In days gone by he would have opened the hivemind to get away from all the swirling confusion and questions. Now, he headed back out into the city and found it easier to just put aside the difficult thoughts in favour of something simpler.

Their greetings fell into a pattern. "How is she?" was a tentative question the first time Cross asked it, still wary of where Alex might want to draw the boundaries of work and family. Alex's reply was easy. He  _ trusted _ Cross. Sometimes he wondered why he did, but it didn't change his gut feeling. And Dana was doing well and he was happy about it, he wanted to talk about it, he figured there was no harm in it anyway.

The first day she got out of bed; the first day she got outside; the day she got given a final 'another week and that's you'; he was kind of like a proud parent sharing all his kid's achievements. And Cross got that smile in his eyes. And Alex tried not to catch him doing it because it made words get stuck in Alex's throat and he started stumbling and then the smile would creep from Cross's eyes to his mouth although he was clearly trying not to let it and Alex felt like he was going to-

He didn't know. He just knew he couldn't seem to shake it, and it swung wildly between a good feeling and a tremblingly frustrated one.

The Wisemen were out on a routine patrol. It was quiet, and normal, and Alex was tagging along because he had nothing better to do, because he'd been jumpy and restless recently and Cross, noticing in his quiet way, had suggested Alex come along just to get out some of that energy. Alex found himself jumping at the chance with a little warm flush. The frantic blasts on the radio came on the homeward curve of their route, a surprise hive hollowed out beneath the road in an area that had just been deemed secure. The Wisemen were on the scene too late to help and too early to avoid what came next; the first deployment of bloodtox 2.0.

Alex knew it was bad the second the first vapour touched his skin and he started to burn. He screeched to a halt but a helicopter banked overhead and the blades blew a cloud at him, enveloping him, and his involuntary hiss of pain drew in a breath that immediately seared him from his mouth to his lungs. He couldn't scream, couldn't utter a sound as the burning mounted and he was on fire, as his insides began to twist and push out the blackening, dying mass scalded by the bloodtox. He clutched his arms around himself, ran, tried to run, staggering across the road as parts of him twitched and convulsed in a panic. Bits of him were falling away as his mass rejected the dead flesh; he staggered, vomited up what used to be his oesophagus, and found himself with a working throat and lungs.

He immediately used them to scream.

It echoed between buildings and was so loud it made the shrieking pain in his head worse. He didn't know if he was still in the bloodtox, he didn't know anything past that white-hot agony - all he could do was instinct, and instinct drew him to doors, darkness, intense quiet, where the air didn't burn, even if his skin still did. He sent furniture flying as he ran through a hollow space until his legs gave out; then he gave over to the pain. It ran through his thoughts like an electric current, scattering them. When he heard movement, he couldn't even lift his head from where it was pressed to the cool ground, and he wanted to hide, but he couldn't stop the whimpers.

Closer now, prowling steps. He covered himself, although it made him gasp from the fresh pain it caused, in spines. He just needed to slough off everything that had been burned, then he could run. He heard the movement coming closer, hunting him. He let out a wet, hunter's growl. The steps stopped. And a voice came, but he couldn't listen to it like this, even inside of his ears were burned and he was fixing himself from the legs up so that he could  _ run- _

The voice again, muffled and incoherent, way too close, edging closer - so he exploded. Howling in pain, he launched himself in the direction of it, his eyes writhing to reform themselves and give him a better chance. The threat dodged to the side, but now they were between him and the way he had come in, the only exit he knew, so he swung wildly, and felt his hand connect with something - something that grabbed his wrist. He lurched backwards. It followed. He lashed out with his other hand and his mass writhed when it felt blood on it, a shock of fresh, clean cells that-

_ Wiseman. _

He stopped, breathing harshly in the silent room that gradually became a dark blur as his eyes started to work. The Wiseman strain's screams died inside him as he finished absorbing it. It made him  _ hungry. _

There was movement in front of him, smelling of blood. He twitched. Soft, the voice again; he did know it, but it didn't make the feeder tendrils stop squirming underneath his damaged skin.

"-ou hear me, Alex?"

Cross was just a black shape on a grey background, but Alex thought he could make out the glisten of blood on his face.

"Alex? It's just me. I'm sorry."

_ Run, _ Alex wanted to yell, at Cross this time, not himself.  _ Run away from me before I kill you. _

"It's alright. It's just us. You're safe in here."

_ But you're not. _ When he tried to say it, it came out as a pained noise instead, slurred and incomprehensible. He wanted to sink to his knees, but what if Cross took that for him relaxing and came too close? His legs were almost normal, but the rest of him was still burning. He would lose more mass before he was done. He  _ needed _ to eat.

"Alex? Can you hear me?"

He was closer again - Alex wanted the comforting hand on his arm to draw him out of this as much as he wanted to consume, but he wasn't getting one without the other. 

"Don't- come closer-" he managed, his voice between a rasp and a whimper.

"Alright. It's just me. It's Cross."

_ "Hungry." _

There was the expected pause, time enough for Cross to remember that he was approaching a monster. Alex inhaled the smell of his blood and waited for him to run.

"I've got a bag of peanuts in my pocket, but I guess that's not what you mean."

Even Alex's viral pulse stuttered for a second of surprise. Seriously? Was now the time? He grit his teeth and tried again. "You should- should run-"

"I'm not going anywhere." he sounded flawlessly calm "Can you even see? Fix yourself up, then I'll go."

"Don't wanna  _ kill _ you-"

"You won't."

"You don't know-"

"I do. When was the last time you ate your sister, or your doctor friend?"

"Not the same," Alex mumbled slowly, even if it kind of wasn't. He'd felt pretty hellish when Ragland found him keeled over in the bathroom, half passed out.

"I think it is. Give yourself some credit, Alex. There's a reason you're not the thing Blackwatch thinks you are."

Through the pain, somehow, was that familiar flush of warmth that actually seemed to make it all hurt less. Alex sank to the floor, and curled in on himself, and heard Cross post up by the door. It was still arduous to fix everything, but he found himself feeling for Cross's pulse in the air and timing the waves of healing with it. Nothing disturbed him. It must have been hours before he gingerly pulled himself to his feet, feeling fragile but not too sore, and not as desperately hungry as before. With the injuries gone, his body was panicking less, and the need to consume became less urgent.

He looked about - and there was Cross, standing vigil, watching him. Alex shuffled over almost sheepishly, and finally saw what he'd done. The gash in Cross's cheek had bled all down his neck and stained his uniform, and the blood on his sleeve showed where he'd staunched it with the only thing he'd had. It glistened, and was probably only just short of showing his teeth - there was certainly a glimpse of his cheekbone. Alex's throat closed. "I- fuck, I'm sorry-"

"Don't worry about it, I've had worse." Cross smiled with the other side of his mouth "It'll be gone in two weeks."

"I didn't know it was you- if I'd-"

_ "Alex." _ Cross held out a hand, hovering it, asking. Alex didn't think - he just put his own into Cross's open palm. There was a flicker in Cross's eyes, but it was dark, and he squeezed Alex’s hand too quickly for Alex to second-guess himself - all the other memories that tried to tell Alex that this wasn't the done thing got shoved away. "It's alright. You did good."

He would feel dumb about it later. Right now, though, Alex couldn't comprehend how much that little praise buoyed him up.

"Now go eat something."

Alex watched the gash on Cross's face slowly close up, inch by inch, until it was just a red, messy line, and that too began to fade. Alex still felt guilty to look at it. Cross would catch him staring, raise one eyebrow, and give him a gently admonishing look because he knew exactly what Alex was thinking.

"There," Cross said at last, running his thumb down the paling mark "It'll be gone soon. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Good fucking riddance,” Alex muttered, his face heating up when Cross laughed. 

“It was never that bad.”

Alex just shrugged, unconvinced. It was bad for his guilt and his insecurities, thinking about how easily that could have been a killing blow if Cross hadn’t-

“Hey.” Cross murmured, and his hand touched Alex’s arm lightly. Alex was aware of how close he’d come, almost enough for their bodies to touch. The world seemed to fade away behind the sensation of that. “You’re doing it again.”

Alex looked up at him, feeling hazy around the edges. Cross was staring at him, a weird expression on his face that seemed to skirt the edge of something soft but almost unhappy. It was almost dreamlike, the way Alex lifted his hand, and left his fingertips come to rest on the pale scar, following it down Cross’s face to where it reached his chin, and then, unable to stop, touching his parted lips.

The way Cross’s breath hitched brought reality crashing back down on top of Alex, the cold realisation and insecurity of what he’d done suddenly stark. He pulled his hand away-

“Don’t.”

For a second, Alex didn’t move, his mind struggling to make the word fit the reaction he was expecting. In the pause, Cross took his wrist. Alex's fear melted as his hand was gently guided back to Cross's face, as he smoothed with one finger the hair at his temple, as he traced the curve of his jaw- as his legs felt like they were going to give out under him when Cross turned his head to press his mouth against Alex's palm.

Everything made  _ sense, _ all of a sudden; things he should have worked out earlier, but he’d just assumed- he wasn’t human, he couldn’t have  _ this, _ he surely didn’t want  _ this,  _ he didn’t deserve it either-

Cross half leant in and stopped, making Alex yearn in barely a second. “Can I-?” he breathed, eyes flickering from Alex’s lips to his eyes. Alex didn’t trust his voice. He pulled weakly on the back of Cross’s neck, and saw him smile before their lips slid together.

**Author's Note:**

> It was only after I'd written half of it that I realised my 'Alex Mercer care guide' is apparently just 'fall in love with him' but eh, it's been sitting around for a while, I finish it now or I finish it never.


End file.
